TAA member James V. Morrison, the Stodghill Professor Classics at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, has been awarded a Publication Grant from the Textbook & Academic Authors Association to cover image permission costs for his forthcoming academic book, Comedy in Literature and Popular Culture from Aristophanes to Saturday Night Live. The book will be published by Routledge in 2025.

“I was delighted to learn that I have received a $1,000 Publication Grant from TAA,” he said. “It is very generous of TAA to support this work of comparative literature and performance: the images are especially valuable for sections in the book discussing parody, satire, and caricature.”

Said Morrison: “Comedy in Literature and Popular Culture: From Aristophanes to Saturday Night Live explores comedy with two goals, First, I introduce wonderful comic works that readers may be unfamiliar with. Many people may know Monty Python and Shakespeare but have never heard of Plautus or P. G. Wodehouse. Others will know Tig Notaro and Jerry Seinfeld but not the Marx Brothers or Charlie Chaplin. Comedians from the past 2500 years will appear, beginning with ancient Greece and Rome, and then onto Shakespeare, Moliere, and twentieth- and twenty-first century comedy, film, novels, stand-up, television, political cartoons, and more. My fondness for Aristophanes, Plautus, Shakespeare, P. G. Wodehouse, and Charlie Chaplin soon becomes apparent.

“My second goal is to use these works to explore questions about comedy to which I have yet to receive satisfactory answers.  Is comedy a mirror of our lives? Is it ‘funny ’cuz it’s true’? Or is it funny because it ignores reality? Another question: Should we distinguish between the plot of a comic play and the jokes found in it? Are the jokes gratuitous—just there to make us laugh–or are the jokes as essential as the plot? A third question: Do memories of satirical portrayals on the comic stage displace recollections of the historical person? That is, do we remember what Sarah Palin said or what Tina Fey’s ‘Sarah Palin’ said on Saturday Night Live? This leads us to wonder whether Aristophanes’ Clouds was responsible for the execution of Socrates? By juxtaposing works from different cultures and time periods, I seek to demonstrate a universal recourse to certain familiar techniques, situations, and characters.”

TAA Publication Grants provide reimbursement for eligible expenses directly related to bringing an academic book, textbook, or journal article to publication. Apply for a TAA Publication Grant. The next deadline is October 31, 2024.